


Golden Grove Unleaving

by mresundance



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, M/M, Old Age, Older Characters, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:52:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mresundance/pseuds/mresundance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/5880.html?thread=22290680">this prompt</a>: <em>The last three words John Watson said to Sherlock.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Grove Unleaving

‘You total prat,’ John said fondly. Certainly not for the first time in their nearly forty year partnership. Sherlock had left the garden door open and a balmy, evening breeze had rolled in, smelling of yellowing leaves and dwindling sunlight.

Sherlock curled, knees to chin, in his favourite garden chair. He stared out at the blue-black outlines of hedges and wood. John kissed the top of his grey head. Sherlock’s coarse hair still smelled like the raspberry bushes they had plucked earlier. The wind gusted and shook the trees and the grass, then stopped and the wood became dark and silent.

‘Did I leave the door open?’ Sherlock said vaguely. He’d suffered a stroke a few years before and that beautiful, soaring, Gothic cathedral of a brain had slowly begun to crumble; fractures splintering the flagstones and the wide columns; cracks and splits appearing in the foundation stones. John had known when Sherlock went to have a bath and did not leave the bathroom for three hours. Sherlock had kept repeating the words ‘Gloria Scott’, his laughter hoarse as John fished him out.

‘Oh John, remember?’

‘No,’ John had said, nausea burning in his stomach.

‘But you have to remember. You were there, weren’t you?’

‘No,’ John said gently. ‘That was Victor, not me.’

Shock had bloomed across Sherlock’s face, but only for a second.

‘Of course I remember,’ said Sherlock, briefly gaining sharpness, then sliding back into unfocus. ‘You must have been there. I remember,’ he’d grumbled.

Sherlock reached up and grasped John’s hand with his own. His hand was so bony, so thin. It felt delicate as bird bones, veins black against the white of his skin in the twilight.

‘Don’t wait up for me. I’ll be in soon.’ And though his voice trembled, he sounded like Sherlock. Underneath the frailty was the willful, brilliant, impossible man John’d always tried to love, especially when he was most difficult.

John kissed Sherlock’s hand; it was cold. He would remember that later, how cold his friend’s hand had been. Then he went inside and shut, but did not lock, the garden door.

In the morning, Sherlock remained curled in his favourite garden chair. Sunlight bathed him in amber. Though the man who had been John’s husband, his friend, had gone, his body looked becalmed. What remained of Sherlock smiled softly, holding his hand to his lips, staring emptily into the wood.

 

* * *

 

Read [I Meet You There, and We Go](http://irisbleufic.livejournal.com/266356.html) and am currently reading [The Presbury Letters](http://katieforsythe.livejournal.com/13054.html). As a result, I couldn’t stop ruminating about the pair of them in their latter years.


End file.
